How Louise Avery Built LA Brewery From Scratch || GTG S07 E03

0:00What are they going to do when they find out this is in my kitchen? It was massive imposter syndrome. I would dress up in a boiler suit. I don't know why I did this. But I would dress up to deliver it to pretend I was a delivery person because I didn't want the staff to recognise me as the person that trained them. So I would go in and try and pretend I was someone else because I didn't want them to know I was one person running the business. So I moved back to London and started again and got a job as a waitress, which was quite a bizarre thing. I just had no money for so long. When you really love something, all the doors actually started to open and that had never happened to me.

0:40I'd applied and applied and applied things that I thought I really loved and just had these constant rejections. At the start, like, naivety is your superpower. Yeah. Like, what you don't know, because if you did know, would you do it? Absolutely no way. So what were some of the biggest challenges then at the beginning? The first very big challenge was building a brewery with no experience. So I love fermentation in all its forms. Oh, that's delicious. Oh, good. Oh, my gosh. Before we get into today's episode, I want to give a shout out to a special sponsor, Sam Lawrence Recruitment. We all know that finding the right people or the right job can feel really overwhelming, and that's exactly where Sam comes in.

1:22He really just gets it. It's not just about ticking boxes. It's about connecting the right people with the right opportunities. He takes the time to understand you and exactly what you're looking for, whether you're building a team or taking that next career leap. So definitely get in touch. Trust me, you'll be glad you did. Charlie is a three-time founding member of Startup Brands, taking each from 0 to 1 million within 18 months across different categories, channels and countries, including launching operations in the US and Australia. He is now the founder of Plugin Brands, an award-winning outsourced FMCG sales agency working with the fast-growth food and drink brands, and Dive-In Agency, a tick-top shop agency helping brands turn social commerce into real revenue.

2:05With a background in go-to market strategy, brand development, and distribution through retail and wholesale channels, there isn't any one better place to help you supercharge your brand. Charlie and the Plugin Brands team work with a host of brands, including Moju, Muller, Clipper T, Who Gives a Crap and Lovecorn. So if you're in need of an extra pair of hands to really step on your growth this year, Charlie is the guy you need to be in touch with. Getting to Grow is also brought to you by the Coconut Collab. And full disclosure, as I'm sure most of you are aware, I work there. So I know how much love goes into everything that we make.

2:41We're all about creating delicious, dairy-free, plant-based treats that do not compromise on taste. From our creamy yogurts, to our indulgent desserts. Everything's made with coconuts and a whole lot of care. If you're looking for something naturally good, but seriously tasty, and my favorite is just our natural coconut yogurt. I have it most mornings with granola and lots of honey. Trust me, you're going to absolutely love it. Welcome back to another episode of Getting to Grow. On this week's episode, we have the amazing Louise Avery, who is the founder of the gorgeous LA Brewery. I can't wait to dive so deep into this business.

3:15Welcome Louise. Thank you Zoe. I am thrilled to be here. So excited. Thank you again so much for coming all the way from VAR. No I loved it. Thanks. So tell me about you. What were you doing before? Before I started the business? Actually I think my whole life I wanted to have a business. I just didn't know what it would be and I at the age of about 30 which is going back 15 years I had a job in Clerkenwell and I was running a design studio and every day people would come and tell me their problems and I would go to the window and look outside and just think oh my god what am I doing here in this nine to five and so that led to me quitting my job and going to the Hebrides.

4:01Even though I sort of liked management I just felt like I just felt like such a cog and in the wrong place and so I moved back to Scotland where I'm from and I got a job at a weaving mill on this island which was like two jobs on the island so it was a miracle and in that time I was there for two years and I just started going back to my roots a bit like my mum was a painter and a forager and she brought me up as a single mother and we would comb the beaches for things to eat etc and when I was there I started learning about fermentation and baking and all of these things and I also started well I didn't start drinking I was already drinking but I kind of thought shit I'm drinking a lot every day and I started learning about kombucha and at the time my boyfriend actually was American and he took me to Vermont.

4:56It's a long winded way of saying I tried kombucha in Vermont the first time and I absolutely fell in love with the taste profile. So I came back to Mull where I was living and I started experimenting with the drinks and what I noticed was if I had these fermented drinks at around 6 p.m it totally took away my desire for alcohol and I you know I do like the old glass of wine but what I find now especially as I get a bit older is I just can't process it in the same way and so when I was sort of playing around with these drinks I kind of I started seeding this idea and I worked out if I use really delicate white teas I could create something closer to a champagne or and if I wanted like a cider-like drink I could play with black teas or the assams and the Darjeelings and if I wanted something that was more like a beer I could sort of use a green tea and introduce hops and so from that this whole idea sort of seeded a business and it was more like just a dream in my heart it was it was very intuitive and I just suddenly thought god this could be something and it was 10 years ago when I started making the drink so maybe a bit longer and at the same time there was a lot of um uh scientific evidence coming in about the relationship between gut health um and the brain and so it was kind of like oh gut health was this huge trend that was coming in people were drinking less and everything sort of came together and also the understanding between ultra processed foods and our health and so i kind of thought there's something here and so I moved back to London and started again and got a job as a waitress which is was quite a bizarre thing I just had no money for so long and I started selling my drinks in the restaurant I was working in and it sort of went from there and the way that when you're doing something that you just you'll know this when you really love something all the doors actually started to open and that had never happened to me I'd applied and applied and applied things I thought I really loved and just had these constant rejections and then when I started doing this like well these restaurants approached me a publisher approached me to write a book and it just sort of went from there and that's you know that was how I came up with it and how I fell in love with it and you it's amazing you felt like you had this like total calling that you had to do it Yeah, like I just, it was actually, I just loved doing it.

7:44It wasn't work. Yeah, that's the best. That was the best. And I actually, in order to keep doing, I had three other jobs. So I was waitressing and I actually started working for a tailor and then I looked after a friend's children. And then I, with that, I had enough money to make these drinks in my spare time and I would deliver them. I would actually, I would make these limited editions every single week. and I was still learning and I would go to my mum's house in Somerset and she has these apple orchards okay wow actually lots of fruit orchards and I would go there and pick up the seasonal fruit and elderflowers in the summer or the hops in the hedgerow and I would bring them back and then make these just sort of really creative drinks on a weekly basis and see what worked I'd see what would like become more lively so some drinks would almost become explosive and some were just so successful and people requested them again and again so it was like this is how I did my market research I just started selling with absolutely no idea what I was doing but I kind of in that space of time I just learned a huge amount and I would deliver them on my bicycle to people's houses around Hackney and Islington so I had friends and then the first major restaurant that approached me was Hakkasan.

9:05And I was like, oh my God. Oh my God. What are they going to do when they find out this is in my kitchen? Like I just, I was mortified by the fact that I felt like, you know, I just, it was massive imposter syndrome. And then I sort of used to, had a very old car. I would dress up in a boiler suit. I don't know why I did this, but I would dress up to deliver it, to pretend I was a delivery person because I didn't want the staff to recognize me as the person that trained them so I would like I would go in and try and pretend I was someone else because I didn't want them to know I was one person running the business and kind of leave the drinks and they'd say take them to the bar and I was like no no no I can't because I thought if the bar manager knows how small I am he's gonna delist me yeah so it's very embarrassing but um that's such an interesting yeah but it's it's it's it's not embarrassing but it's like that is you yeah you're right in the sense of in the early days how you want everybody wants to be perceived as so much bigger and actually I think Hakkasan would have loved that it was just you yeah I don't know if they would have like I mean I actually then moved out of my house I got a loan from Virgin but I don't know if they needed to know as much yeah okay fine how raw the whole process was but they did a whole market sweep and they selected me with one other brand and I actually just couldn't believe it how did you keep up with that demand in the start of you're doing it from your kitchen I mean it wasn't I like had three customers and they were one of them and I just sort of you know I worked I worked all the time I worked in the evenings and the weekends and I would produce like as many I could probably produce about 400 bottles you know wow in a couple of weeks and so I would do all that and it would all go out the door and and then I just restricted the flow into yeah um so that was that was really fun and very scary and I think that kind of fear of people finding out lasted like three or four years even into having investment you know into meeting my business partners all of that stuff you're like what when are they going to realize that she's just some kid who's rocks up from the boonies in Scotland with this idea Anyway, that sort of never happened.

11:18And then I went and I realized, oh, that's actually strength. But it took me a really long time. And now when I meet people and they're in that sort of beautiful phase at the beginning and they're so creative and they don't know what they don't know. It's like it's it's so energizing because they don't have all the commercial restrictions. No one's told them about trading standards. Yeah. All that really dull stuff that sort of blunts your creativity. So, yeah, I'm very into that. your beginning where you've got this dream and you haven't sort of been beaten down by having a business yeah well funny enough a lot a lot of the people I have on the podcast say very similar things in the sense that at the start like naivety is your superpower yeah like what you don't know because if you did know would you do it absolutely no way and you're sort of driven by this kind of hunger and excitement and when we um I'm obviously skipping ahead now but when we um I got I met my business partners investors they'd you know they had uh started green and black chocolate and new covent garden soup and they have causton press and they were so experienced what was that gentleman's name john stapleton uh was was he the guy that he's the covent oh william kendall oh okay I think You know another gentleman there?

12:37Well, another gentleman. There are. So when they said, well, how are we going to grow? And I said, well, let's build a brewery in Suffolk. And I was like, I know what to do. And I was like, I literally don't know what to do. And we did it. And we found this 2 ,000 square foot space on an airfield. And it just sort of had to wing it because I had no idea what I was doing. And there was no information. beer breweries have all this information and they share and there's a lot of sort of beautiful synergy and co-working amongst producers that just didn't exist and no one really knew at that time what a kombucha fermentation was so it's like you know I'd made it at home and I was like you know what do we do so we just made it up we just like built a room we kept it at temperature and then we just started trying to scale this drink which was monumentally difficult but what was interesting is it sort of worked and we had like sort of eight really complicated years of just trying to learn about bacteria and yeast and how they would behave which is badly they're very badly oh really but it was like a lot of beauty in that like these wild fermentations can create the most incredible flavors okay um they're a whole creative journey in themselves So what were some of the biggest challenges then at the beginning?

14:04Well, that was the first very big challenge, was building a brewery with no experience. And my partner's credit to them just helped introduce me to brewers and scientists and anyone who could help us figure out this sort of conundrum of how to... it's not like so if somebody's making I don't know just like a tea based soft drink or a soft drink they can make one liter or they can make 10 ,000 liters same amount of time if you're a big producer for us we have to scale it and it's not going to rush because you could if you suddenly put your culture in a big tank it will die so we always had to keep it alive so we could only go so far so that was the biggest challenge to make sure that we could retain the quality whilst growing um and then having to introduce people to a new drink that they didn't really understand they're like what do you mean it's live yeah i was gonna say now obviously it's it's a very saturated market yes so many kombuchas out there and now there's like fiber drinks that have kind of come on the market and i'm thinking actually all right when kombucha was really in its infancy it must have been a really difficult sell because like fermented food doesn't taste like normal food it tastes incredibly different it has that sour yeah you know kind of taste that people might go oh I'm not sure yeah so how was that whole education process in the early days really tricky um and and yeah you're absolutely right when you use the word fermented people would sort of shrivel up it's a bit like vegan it still has a connotation yeah yeah it's very harsh well it were just meant off that's what it meant to people oh it's off my orange juice is fermented in the fridge it's gone fizzy and I uh and and to try and help people see around that and obviously it doesn't always it would sometimes smell differently like smell a bit vinegary and all that and then to say do you know what but that's really good for you was you know I'm gonna have one right then yeah it was monumentally challenging um so that was but then it did and then people started to understand it and my first customers actually had usually traveled to America so they already had a sense of what it was and it has grown but it took a while yeah and now actually as you say it's saturated and I'm rather than kombucha itself I'm much more interested in it as an ingredient and as a process so I love fermentation in all its forms um oh that's delicious oh good oh my gosh correct answer do you know what that's really different to a lot of the ones I've had yeah so so we've sort of evolved it a bit and oh I'm redesigned it to so it's really clean it's really crisp um we've redesigned it to be like a non-alcoholic wine proxy because that's the area I always thought I just want to have a non-alcoholic champagne brand or a champagne brand that happens to be non-alcoholic and the thing that excites me about alcohol and non-alcoholic drinks is that they really play with the palate so unconsciously every time we drink or eat something we have these taste receptors that are triggered so we have sweet receptors and sour receptors and umami receptors and we can detect you know how much viscosity a drink has how much how long it sits on the tongue we've also got bitter receptors and so when I think about drinks I'm always thinking well which of these receptors are going to be triggered to give someone satisfaction so when you take a sip of that what's happening is your tongue's going oh and your mouth is going oh it's sour it's sweet you know it's a little bit dry and there's a tiny bit of bitterness and it's just sitting my mouth and slightly coating it and it's still there and it's and then it's like but that that tart slight sweetness is actually making me want to go back there's a lot going on and that's happening every time you eat something so this unconscious journey happens and I thought we have such potential here and we can do that naturally we don't have to add things we can do it through fermentation and often when you have something that's lightly fermented your body recognizes it and often craves it so some people once they start drinking apple cider vinegar just can't stop why because there's something in the gut there's something that it's it's actually um we have this friendly bacteria in the gut that we need to look after and and when we recognize something i mean this is slightly theoretical when we recognize something i find like if i'm sick all i want is some you know some acv or some kombucha drinks or something with those cultures in it because i know that it will clean my stomach account and get rid of bad bacteria so if i have like a tummy ache sorry this is really going no no no i'm enjoying it um but if if you have a slight tummy ache and you have something completely goes away and it stops nausea and all of those things and so it's just it sort of just rebalances the gut cultures interesting and guys such a hot topic at the moment isn't it like it has come out of literally i feel like it's ballooned in the last probably like 18 to two months two years it's just gone mad everyone's gut gut gut and obviously you've had zoe haven't you as in yeah yeah you know tim specter and that he's really brought a lot of light to kind of the gut and eating the fermented food so have you seen since so you you were so you were early you saw the trend before i was i was a bit probably a bit too early but you did i know it was good but it was definitely harder then than it is now to explain it but um yeah I think I was slightly ahead of my time um but but yeah going back to your point it is absolutely massive now and also we're kind of we're discovering so many connections to illnesses that are now more prevalent than they were sort of 50 years ago and 100 years ago and there are reasons for that when you know our diet has completely changed with ultra processed foods and especially gut health and so um i often do talks and courses around fermented foods and just teaching people how to create biodiversity and and how easy it is once you know so i'm always saying you know you can have um a glass of that ellie brewery um with your lunch or your dinner and you can have a bit of kimchi or kefir um with your lunch or you can go out and pick some wild flowers and sprinkle them over your food and all of that will contribute to biodiversity I mean obviously there are other things you need to do like if you can try and avoid ultra processed foods because they will undo a lot of the good that you do we sort of know this but this is why it's just coming massively into prevalence and especially for children children is you know that their gut is so important they're building up their immunity for life so if you can get them to drink drinks like these and they're actually if they haven't been preconditioned they normally just love them it's the preconditioning isn't it it's giving a child sweet before yeah you know something that is more bland but healthier for you that's what really affects them and we find kids sort of we're like some of them just absolutely love it and no questions asked they don't know anything so you should bring out a little kind of like a kiddie one because actually in saying that like when you go to not that I hang out at the zoo that often but when you go to the zoo and not that I go to centre parts and butlins but I'm assuming it's like a fruit shoot yeah I know about my like I don't go to butlins I actually don't I never been in my life but I'm assuming it's like dominated by fruit shoot capri sun maybe a flavoured water like nothing that's actually probably good for the child no and and a lot of that is due to the economics they're very cheap to produce you know no brains about it our drinks are not as cheap as others you know they go through a six-week fermentation and it's not and then it goes through this extensive process to take out the yeast etc and so we cannot compete with something and it needs that time to build those cultures so we can't compete with some sort of you know whatever a Capri Sun or whatever people drink.

22:28I don't know what they are, but they're great. They're concentrates, watered down. And so it seems like you're doing your kid good because there's fruit. But actually, if you could just... So that's why I try and encourage people to make things at home if they can. They don't have a budget. Like, you know, if you have some time. Yeah, definitely. And make your own foods. And in your first year of trading, how many cans did you sell to now? We've only just brought out the cans. These are new. These are brand new. Do you know what? They're like hot off the press. Well, when you put a post on Instagram today about you going into Ricardo.

23:03Oh, yeah. No, I'm so late to the party on my own Instagram. Fine. Because I was thinking, brilliant. These are brand new. Okay. So you produced, what product did you come out with first? So when we came out, we had, I mean, we have evolved over the years. Because I remember you being in glass bottles. We had, yeah, clear glass bottles in 2017 when we launched LA Brewery. Because I had my own little brand before that. But they were clear 300ml glass bottles and they were chilled. And there was ginger and there was strawberry and black pepper and there was lemongrass. They were great. Yeah, do you know what?

23:43Because I was way back when, I used to go to all the fitness festivals, like the B fits what's the other one balance like years and years ago I'd get I'd get the train up from Bournemouth where I was studying at the time so I was so interested in like F &B and that but there was were you was it listed with a wholesaler yes because there was a shop in Bournemouth that had it yeah and I used to go and get it and a matcha and I'd come back to uni and people be like you're so weird what is this green drink you're drinking and why are you drinking a fizzy fermented drink and i'd be like this i just knew future i know and look at matcha and all these trends now gut fermentation kind of it's everywhere it is everywhere so i remember yeah yeah i remember the glass bottles i did think that i hadn't seen these before no they're literally brand new so they came out a few weeks ago they are delicious but i love them i it took me ages to go into cans because um i really love glass but actually glasses has been taken over environmentally by cans like we still use the champagne bottles for the large serfs but um we were under pressure to move to cans but you know we know this they're much easier to recycle and they're much lighter so we did do that and there's going to be a glass tax coming in next which will make glass bottles much more expensive.

25:07And so we didn't really want to pass that on to the consumer. But the reason I'm excited about them is we've worked with a wonderful designer and I just think they're beautiful. They are beautiful. I'm really pleased with how they, because not all cans are beautiful. No, they look incredibly premium. Thanks. Like you would want to have that at dinner. Oh, yeah, thanks. Yeah, they are gorgeous. They're so, so, so lovely. Thank you. And you mentioned at the start about kind of the self-doubt and, you know, the kind of trying to be basically smaller than you were. How did you overcome that then to eventually the point where you're like, now, no, I am worthy of all this amazing success.

25:41That is like, you know, that takes a lifetime, I'd say. And I'm still working on it in many ways. You know, I think we change, we have to change. And so for ages, I think when I first started the business, I kind of just wanted to be in a cupboard. I just every day, you know, especially when you're raising money and you're sort of speaking to these people who, in my case, it was older sort of male investors. Generally it is. As the world is. 2 % of VC funding goes to women. That's it. Exactly. And so I would be faced with a room full of these much more older, more experienced men and I just had to sort of learn to make myself larger and just show that I really meant business so that they would be willing to invest in me.

26:31Obviously, I had support from my partners as well, which really helped. But I still find, I mean, I actually love talking to investors because they really want to know your why. And if they're experienced, they will know that you're probably going to fail a lot because that's just the nature of business. And so I find that amazing. But I still, I haven't really gotten over it. Like I get really nervous when I'm talking to the press or if I'm going on stage and giving a talk. Like as soon as I'm up there, it's glorious. But beforehand, I always just think, how am I going to give value? How can I give everyone more than what they expect?

27:16Or how can I leave them feeling just, I don't know, some level of inspiration so they go away? And so, yeah, I don't think that goes away. And actually, the minute I do feel confident, it's usually a total flop. So I would say... You need the little nerves. You do need nerves. And I think actually that's another superpower. When you're like nervous about doing a good job or not feeling like... I think you often, or I personally go that extra mile to try and like give something more or give myself so that people, I don't know, get something. So, yeah. And, you know, in terms of business, if I'm talking about story or creativity or all of those things, it comes very naturally when, you know, luckily I have a wonderful managing director who sort of does, you know, runs all the spreadsheets and she's brilliant at that.

28:10But it's hard to be everything. Yeah, it's impossible. You always have to hire better than you because you can't be everywhere and you can't do everything. It's impossible. It is impossible. And also there's no point hiring. You have to hire better than you because you need to learn too. Exactly. You have to take from other people's experience. But the great thing is you do learn. Yeah. And so I do encourage people to always be uncomfortable. I mean, there's no other way really when you have a business. You're always deep. You're uncomfortable. I was funny. The episode that I recorded earlier, they were speaking about, we were saying how there's nothing more scary than sitting still.

28:45Oh, yeah. like I'd rather scale fast than sit still yeah I mean yeah I yeah I mean I sometimes fantasize about I'm not gonna lie I do sometimes fantasize about it like I kind of when think you know they call it the trough I'm sorry happens every few years I mean actually it happens more than that but you know it sometimes you just go into this pit and you're just thinking god this is so hard and sometimes I used to I don't anymore because I don't feel employable anymore but I used to go through job sites and just like imagine what it would be like to apply for this well-paid job and just sort of sit there and just like get a salary and then just go on these holidays every year so um there are moments but but the truth is within your own business if you stop for a second you know you're dead yeah I also think clearly yes having the role would be you know great in the money etc but you I don't think you deeply be satisfied no no no it's miserable it's just a it's just a fantasy yeah and which flavor would you say has been the most like closest to perfect I know that you like to follow that champagne style taste notes and actually I feel like this one really does it's the first thing I thought of when I had a sip oh that's great you could have this in a glass and not think I'm not drinking champagne oh that's wonderful okay Well, the one that I think, I mean, I like them all, to be honest, but the blush, which I'll get you to try later, is, I love this reaction.

30:18That's great. Thank you. I designed like a sparkling rosé, which, so rosés are known for their soft fruits and their lovely acids. And so in our blush, we have strawberries and rhubarb and peach and elderflower. and then we have some hops which is the main flavor in the one you're drinking and that sort of gives you the fruity and the light dryness at the end um from the hops and I think that's kind of a triumph and I love it and last night um I hosted a dinner and bath and I was actually making because it's just these amazing fresh English strawberries right now and a few black Yeah, so I made like a kind of cordial from all the strawberries and some blackberries I found in my garden and put in some apple cider vinegar and then topped it up with a blush.

31:12And it just makes these like absolutely fabulous mocktails. And then just people kept drinking them. They stopped drinking the alcohol and then they moved to this blush. And so, you know, I think that's been a real success. Yeah, it was delicious. So foraging seems to be quite like a... I love it. Yeah, it's really engraving me, I can tell. Yeah, it keeps me grounded, if that's a word. Yeah. So the things... So obviously when you get into work and, you know, there are difficult times, really good times, but let's say you get to a difficult time. The thing that resets me is when I go outside for a walk and that might be at my mum's and some are set or that might be a bath or it might be in Scotland or it might be in Suffolk wherever but when I see the plants I just start I just go back to the beginning and I just love to pick them and I love other people to pick them because there's something really lovely about going and picking the wild roses and bringing them home and then mixing them with your food or sprinkling them on or making a drink out of them and I just it just never it's my it's my reset everyone has a thing yeah they kind of go to which they can sort of reset and that's mine and I just I love what nature gives us I'll just have a little rant on this um so what I love about foraging is that nature provides everything you need medicinally all through the year so for example in spring after winter we kind of usually need to clean out our systems and it's got all these beautiful spring herbs like nettles detox the liver so you can just make a tea out of them and there's something called a sticky willy also known as goose grass but if you put that in water and infuse it and drink that that cleans out your lymphatic system you've got wild mint you've got dandelions another amazing plant so you've got all of these plants in spring that are designed to clean you out and then in summer you've got all these lovely like delicious fruits which are you know basically giving you energy through the summer and lots of vitamin c which you need and then you go to the winter and you've got all the rose hips and blackberries and all of these lovely berries which are so rich in vitamin c that they actually take you through the cold season so everything's designed to support you and it's and i just i find that astounding yeah Yeah, that is kind of amazing, actually.

33:43It is. It's a potheckery and we spend our time trying to get rid of these weeds, but they're not weeds. They're, like, there to help us. And they actually grow in broken grounds, which is because they're trying to repair it. They're just constantly trying to repair the earth and, like, they're there for us. And so I can't get enough of that stuff. And when you say nettle, you mean, like, stinging nettle? Stinging nettle, that is the one. That is the business. So if you get stung by it, it's actually good? Actually, yeah. I mean, it's not very pleasant, but that sort of does something to your immune system it just it sets off a reaction that resets however you don't need to do that and I don't do that because it's not normal just hang on a minute let me just sting my entire body yeah well you you'll certainly stimulate your histamine system but if you just um take off the nettle tips with gloves and then people say they can do it like I know lots of guys who say you just pluck it not true um but if you snip them and then just infuse them in warm water or hot water, drinking tea, or just throw them in an omelette, just wilt them like spinach and butter.

34:46Fabulous. You don't get, you don't sting your mouth? No, because as soon as you stink, then the sting goes out of it. And actually, I tested on my mother recently. She said, oh, I've got, you know, a blood pressure test, and it's a bit high at the moment. Is there anything I can do? Because I'm getting tested in two weeks. So I made her eat a handful of nettles every day. And she said, oh, every day? And I said, yes, every day for two weeks. And she got tested and her levels were fine. It has a profound effect. Wow. A profound effect on your bloods. And so nettles and dandelions and sticky gilliet, they're just so medicinal.

35:27I mean, obviously, you have to keep taking them. Of course. You can extract them. You can eat them in teas, eat them in food, drink them in teas and stuff. So I mean, obviously that's not going to work for everyone, but I was astounded that it did because there's one thing about the theory, like I actually am studying herbal medicine. The background is this because I just love it. Just fun. And because I can. But I was amazed that she just passed a test with flying colors. She's like 83. Wow. Yeah. Anyway, we need a whole nother podcast on like that because I'm like, I'm a bit, my mom's incredibly holistic.

36:00I grew up with not taking a lot of the kind of jabs and stuff. And I had it all out under the tongue and I went to see an atropath. So I'm really interested in this. That must be why the hair. Must be the hair. All the healthy hair. Must be all the healthy hair. And you built your Suffolk site around like green energy. So how do you balance like the commercial viability and the green energy piece? Okay, so when I first discovered B Corp, they were doing a course in London quite a while ago. It was soon after we started the business. And they were encouraging people to go along. And what I loved about it is they were saying, you don't have to get certified, but this is actually a way to build a business.

36:45It's a business plan. And it was just a different way of, it was not commercially driven, but it wasn't uncommercial. So it was like, when you're looking for your suppliers, when you're producing these are all the things you need to take in consideration um and so i sort of fell in love with that ethos and because we were a new business it was sort of easy and actually it's very intuitive this is the way we do business now we always want to make sure that people are looked after otherwise there is no profit you know what i mean so you have to balance the planet and people and profit and I don't one doesn't exist without the other for me and so we have um our drinks are slightly more expensive for all those reasons um but I just I I actually don't think there's any other way so I think that's straightforward I think it's much harder for big corporations when they have fixed processes tiny margins they have to sweep through their entire list of suppliers and you know and that's very difficult for them but for me you know when you don't when you're tiny it's fine so we built it upwards for that and it's the only way and also you got you got so much more control that you know it's big businesses yeah exactly so they have policies in place they have no idea about yeah literally yeah and so we have a supportive investor base who also understand the needs like I don't I couldn't honestly say that being B Corp has transformed sales in that the world is like I don't actually know consumers who really know what it is I know businesses know what B Corp is but if I ask most people on the street they still no they wouldn't know it's it's funny B Corp it comes up a lot it's sort of like tick boxy for businesses but at the same time if you don't have it it does limit you in certain aspects of growing so it's a really tricky one like i know businesses that are really quite big that aren't b corp but still do their bit but b corp is a big process you know it did you go you became fully b corp in 22 yeah yeah so it's a but it was a year or so yeah not because of our business but just because they had so many applications and it was going through covid but I have to say it was easier for us because we were in control of our purchasing chain and we knew all of our suppliers and it was all local and we're British business those things obviously really really help yeah um and how has like fundraising been for you and like learning to fundraise and as you said a male-dominated industry and what things have you learned along the way that you sort of maybe wish you had learned before um i we have raised a lot of money and i think it's it what i've learned is that we and i mean we only work with sophisticated investors so i in an ideal world they know that there's an element of risk um but i guess the way I'd approach it is I'm really honest and that's what I've learned and my business partner told me at the beginning just be yourself because everyone's going to see through you anyway so there's no point pretending to be something you're not and I think that's the best thing he could have ever said because they were just looking for someone who really cared and they knew that there were going to be mistakes along the way and I think that still stands today and what I've really learned throughout the time is more how to because there's one thing saying you know I really love this I believe this is the way the market's going but the other people giving you they're giving you like a lot of money and that really sticks you know it's so much responsibility um and so now it's kind of like how do you answer there the first question I ever got um was why don't you just make it abroad in America and ship it over and I was like bereft at that question I just sort of crumbled and then I gave this really cross response just of all the reasons why I believed in local production and you know in a sense he was right he was that probably would have been a lot less expensive a lot easier but it wouldn't have been my drinks it wouldn't have been my taste it wouldn't have been my heart but now what I've understood is everyone has a really good point when they're asking you questions they're asking you for a reason and so I've sort of learned learned to understand and even if it feels personal it's not it's about their money and they need to understand their investment is safe so I think that's I've had to mature a lot and not take things personally and when you know they're asking pressing questions about me or my personal plans or how the business is going to grow and is this a realistic number because the truth is when you're investing you normally put a number at so when you're fundraising you put a number in which is probably it can be way higher than you're going to do and then you're going to have to talk to them at the end of that hearing say why yeah why you didn't make that number so you've got to be really aware of that because there's going to be questions and so just being more grown up about it and understanding that if you fail you have that responsibility to explain why and that's the same if you win everything's great when sales are going brilliantly but when you get covered when you get all these other challenges the world is not an easy place to do business especially for a small business it's it's kind of always against you actually it's like there's so many things as a small business that you don't have like you don't have you know the millions of capital that Diageo and all these massive drinks brands do have and you know that they can if you're onto something good they can also just do something similar you know and so it's like how do you keep your originality and how do you explain to a buyer that yours is worth it because they don't care that much you know they're just they just need to cover their own sales they're not like oh she's very sweet you know she's taking it here she's nice yeah she's nice but they do it it looks pretty and it's half the cost why don't we just go with them our buyers don't know the difference you know so you're kind of you're like kind of defend your position of why something's better and even if in your opinion and 10 other people's opinion yours tastes better they'll be like i know it tastes better but i don't know if the general public think it tastes better and so so it's that kind of thing that's that's pretty challenging in the world of and you You mentioned that your products are premium.

43:31Do you want to stay in that kind of premium bracket always? Or do you think there is a spot for you in maybe, you know, not cheaper supermarkets, but the ones that are slightly perceived as less? Oh, yeah, God, absolutely. I would say premium, but not super premium. So I'm trying to be hover around, you know, there are sort of sparkling teas like ours, which are 25 to 35 pounds. And ours is sort of in the tent. 12 pound marker so compared to them well you know we're not very premium compared to a bottle of schlur or something or like a kind of cheaper non-alcoholic wine that's four pounds we're really premium so it's kind of like 12 pounds though i think is incredibly reasonable for a really good quality product 25 quid i'd struggle to spend that i think so but that's a real change in attitude that's a that's a shift because um originally when we talked to buyers and supermarkets they said there's no one's going to spend over 4.99 for something that's not alcoholic that's just not happening and i kind of see their point but in the last three years that's completely changed so it's interesting how quickly people are interested in investing in their own health um and spending money on something that's good for them as well as non-alcoholic and looking at it the same amount of time that they would a wine bottle so i find that there's some fascinating things going on in the non-alcoholic world where people are really practicing fermentation and different cultures to try and create new drinks to to make drinks with that give certain benefits um and i think that's only going to increase and so now it's not just oh i have a non-alcoholic drink it's like which one there's all these choices and what you know Is there some terroir involved?

45:23And who's making it? Is it good for the planet? And is it good for me? And is it ultra-processed? And are there sulfites? And so those are new conversations happening around this non-alc, not-drinking moment, which I'm here for. Yeah, it's massive as well, isn't it? It's really booming. I mean, wellness is just huge. Like, kids aren't drinking as much. You know, universities are having to switch and look at what they offer in their student unions because there just isn't the demand. Not just guzzling beer. Yeah. But older people also, so we always talk about young people, but also people over 50 are not drinking as much.

45:57And they were really boozing it up. But I mean, my mum, bless her, she will only drink a non-alcoholic drink at lunchtime. The evening is for wine. But there's huge amounts of them that have realized that it's just not working. And we're doing incredibly well in that. Yeah. It's actually, it's almost like everyone. It's just taking a step back. Yeah, it's just moderate. and I yeah I like a glass of wine but I also love moderating I like I want it all but I want it all to taste good yeah like it's all going to be special like why compromise in any moment of your life absolutely and you spoke about earlier about the consistency of like you know when you're producing one bottle to two million bottles how do you ensure consistency of such like a product that is live well that's a good question we've now recently started outsourcing and which has been just brilliant for me because i love having a factory but now we really need to grow we just didn't have enough capacity um and they are wonderful and we're working with cultures which are all um nice and stable and so we still have the really good live cultures but we don't have the ones that cause the volatility so that's one aspect of it and then we use a bit of filtration to take out the yeast and that's essentially the way we still keep a live product but it's just selecting the right strains of the cultures which can be stable because consistency is is key yeah consistency is everything and um over the years we've got more and more and more and more consistent but it is a journey it's not just one day to the next it's like so much learning um in fermentation and people do keep it close to their chest or the knowledge and so we learned a huge amount and now we've learned more and um what I'm really pleased with is now we we have the live cultures but it it's oh to to taste the same on day one is day 30 is day 60 it's like I can't tell you how relaxing that is to know that like you have a consistently insane product that goes out there yeah and just like imagine you have a you know it it will last for like a year I mean it's it will change because it's fermented and I think that's really beautiful like it will just very subtly shift maybe dry out a bit but that's all in line with wines you know wine fermentations do slightly shift in the bottle and to be part of that is really cool for me absolutely you should do like I remember you do this but like um like tours of your brewery oh because like i've been to so many like wine farms and like wine tours and beers and gins but i don't know much about yeah yeah the kind of distillery and not distillery but the fermentation process of kombucha yeah much yeah yeah and i don't think any other kombucha brands are like offering that kind of intel yeah yeah well we would we will at some point um like a behind the scenes behind the scenes or like courses like I want to go brew my own now well I yeah I mean I just I think that it's funny um I remember when I so I wrote a book oh for a long time ago it was when I um before LA Brewery launched and it actually did an underground hit did quite well um who knew wow uh it was well it's just all about kombucha um and I remember someone saying it's good but you're not talking about scaling you're not talking about this and I said the kombucha world is already pretty niche yeah we want to have a kombucha brewery is even nicer but the more and more people are wanting to learn about home fermentation so I've started teaching again which I'm really really enjoying um but I'm actually writing a second book now about kombucha fermentation which and other ferments and teas and shrubs and how to incorporate foraging into that so that you can almost create an apothecary of homemade things and then just use bought drinks and just make it really really exciting so if you want to host a non-alcoholic dinner party you can do that or just always make sure that person is feeling special but do what I do I serve non-alc and wine at parties yes you've got a bit of both choice is good and as I always find you know a lot of my friends and mothers and after two drinks they're like okay what do you got now I need to switch yeah I've got to take the kids to school at six yeah whatever so um and then if I could teach all of them just how to very easily incorporate that into their lives and also make sure their children are getting something yeah and introducing those tastes early on so they sort of develop those sort of curious sophisticated palettes at young age well I've just had my wedgie before later or did you have a drink this morning no I didn't actually that no I didn't I've had my mini wedgie yeah mini wedgie no I did not have it when I had lots of coffee okay um before later I love that that term that you've kind of coined but with the kind of What more trends do you see coming out in the future when it comes to non-AUK?

51:14You know, you're right, the kind of the moderation is really, I see it in my friends and how people are doubling down. Is there anything else you see as like the next kind of trend that's maybe on the horizon? I think there are two aspects. This is a good question. The first one is a trend and or just you could say that it's just the way the market's moving. I truly believe that we'll become less black and white about drinking and lower alcohol, sort of 2 % and 3 % and 4 % drinks will increase. So at the moment it tends to be non-alcoholic, alcoholic. However, there are incredible drinks that are 2 % or 3 % which taste amazing.

51:54You feel pretty relaxed but your body processes them faster than it can absorb the alcohol. So you're actually not at any point becoming intoxicated. and I think that's genius so you can really feel like you're having a special almost alcoholic drink but you're not getting any negatives effect so I think that that's an area of low alcohol wines once someone cracks it and I think that's where mixed fermentation comes in because you can make certainly with a homebrew you can take up to two percent and it tastes phenomenal so I think low alcohol beers and wines sooner or later will be on the increase like a table beer yeah And then the other aspect of that is it's not really a trend, but it's more like the knowledge around.

52:43So obviously menopause is everywhere right now. And women just can't process alcohol in the same way at that stage. It's just something in your body changes or the hormones changes. And I think that will affect the number of people. But the more sort of understanding we have around that will sort of increase people's understanding of drinking and not drinking. And the other thing is blood sugar. So blood sugar understanding is really on the increase. And you see more and more people monitoring their sugar levels with those monitors, which are really helpful. And actually, they don't get triggered by alcohol.

53:22But that doesn't mean they're not being damaged. What happens is your liver goes into crisis. and so it's not actually it's just trying to process the alcohol so your blood sugar drops but it's actually not in a good way and afterwards it will go back up again and so I think the relationship between long-term drinking um obviously I'm talking unmoderated and blood sugar will take off and that will have an impact because especially live drinks stop um the blood sugar spike it's like acv and kombucha drinks shouldn't spike your blood sugar and that's actually i think going to be really important because the links between blood sugar and overall health and disease are also becoming incredibly well known it's coming more and more into public knowledge it's fact we've been given that's another thing i think as well as with the public have been given so much knowledge like with the likes of zoe and the likes of the internet and the likes of instagram and tiktok we are inundated with information yeah it's actually exhausting it is exhausting and you don't actually know what's right from wrong you've got fake news it's really difficult to distinguish it's very i agree it's very difficult to navigate um i find myself now i go through days where i just cannot look at it because you you look at it once and then you're constantly and your algorithm and then like you're upset and then ah you're like i'm doing everything wrong i know it's stressful but if we can sort of try not to worry too much about it but also just be aware of it i think those things will affect the general alcohol and the alcoholic world because they can't not definitely and so you've outsourced production because you want to scale yes so what's next for la brewery uh what is next um i think you know just like a regular business we're continuing to grow sales um there's places i really want to be stuck i was gonna say what's your what's your like i'd really love to get onto british airways yeah i mean i just i don't know i don't know why i i would love that um i'd love to get into waitress yeah and trying that for years um and then i'm working on some new drinks right now which are um similar to shrubs which also have health benefits but even more focusing on I like this idea of non-alcoholic with benefits yeah it's a sort of functional yeah functional non-alcoholic is sort of a new sector that doesn't fully exist that I'm trying to push through but there are a few drinks doing it out there which are doing a great job so I'm working on that right now and yeah all things creative and if LA Brewery were a person what would they look like how would they walk up and down the street Louise you are it I am LA Louise Avery Brewery well I'd say they would be creative curious love food all food and hopefully chic definitely chic I mean the packaging equals chic so chic so darling but not too serious no absolutely not yeah yeah exactly so that hopefully is what they're like a bit feminine yeah definitely has a little air of that um louise thank you so much for coming on getting to grow that hour completely whizzed by yeah i know wow whizzed completely whizzed by absolutely whizzed um thank you so much it's been amazing and fascinating learning about kind of your business the trends also like more about fermentation and kind of like also like what you're really obsessed with which is like the kind of come across yeah but no that's amazing like you have to be obsessed with your product but actually I've learned so much it's so much more than what you do here it's like this whole science and there's so much more going on when it comes to like you know you're obsessed with foraging and yeah and all that and staying and it's true that the brand people think that that's the um that's everything about someone but the truth is it's just like a tiny fragment of a person because it's the final sort of distilled distilled distilled distilled what will everyone understand but it's always a whole world behind that of inspiration and excitement and movement and if there isn't it's when things tend to go flat yeah if I didn't have the time to go into nature and play with drinks and do my own thing I think the brand would suffer yeah because you won't have that your downtime in your creative space yeah yeah yeah my spirit would just die yeah well we don't want that we don't want that I'll have to look at this and I'm excited to try this one this looks gorgeous like that is something I would take over to like a friend's for dinner.

58:03Like you feel pleased to bring this bottle. Yeah. Well, that's what people do. They feel excited. Yeah, it's lovely. Thank you so much. Thank you.